Opinion

Hawthorn, Geelong and Sydney have shared eight of the past 10 premierships, the two teams to wrest that domination away and sneak one for themselves are Collingwood and West Coast.There’s an obvious theme here. The mighty Hawks, Cats and Swans have ...

Channel Seven's chief AFL reporter Mark Stevens gives fans the five reasons Sydney will win the Grand Final on Saturday.Five reasons why Swans fans should be comfortable backing the monster called Sydney: 1. You can even forget the great Gary Ablett...

Channel Seven's Chief AFL reporter Mark Stevens gives his five reasons why Hawthorn can beat Sydney in the AFL grand final.1. Sydney's struggles at the MCGThe Swans just haven’t been themselves at the MCG of late. Yes, they got the job done in the 2...

Seven's chief AFL reporter Mark Stevens continues his Finals Fives, today looking at the top Brownlow Medal contenders.1. Dyson Heppell (Essendon): This is the year for something different, given Gary Ablett’s early exit, and Heppell ticks so many B...

Yes, there are three games to go, but the All-Australian team is already set in stone.If the Coach of the Year race was frozen in the same way, who'd be in front right now?Here we go.1. KEN HINKLEY (Port Adelaide)Sealed the deal on Saturday night by...

Channel Seven's chief AFL reporter Mark Stevens picks his five most important players to look out for in tonight's qualifying final between old enemies Hawthorn and Geelong.1. Brian Lake (Hawthorn)Has the massive job on Tom Hawkins and it will be fa...

Channel Seven's chief AFL reporter, Mark Stevens, picks his top five rising stars from the 2014 season.1. Marcus Bontempelli (Bulldogs)Would be taken no.1 if the entire list of nominations went into the draft, but that is irrelevant in judging proce...

We should have seen it coming.The match review panel/tribunal system has been a runaway train for a while, storming faster than a combined force of Alex Georgiou and Tom Lynch.For several seasons now, the end result has been deemed more important th...

Dean Bailey had a wit as sharp as his carefully manicured sideburns.In front of the camera as Melbourne coach, he often trotted out the same message, careful to temper expectations and deflect attention away from his emerging side.Away from the glar...

Andrew Demetriou was as entertaining as he's ever been on-the-record when the media gathered for his farewell on Monday morning.But Demetriou has always been an off-the-record type of guy.With the cameras and microphones off, he can be cutting, out...

The coming year, 2014, could be very bad for Collingwood.President-for-life Eddie McGuire made a big decision a few years ago to get rid of Mick Malthouse.He immediately won a premiership with the Pies. The pressure was on.Eddie installed one of his...

Most seasons a club from the lower half of the ladder the previous year jumps up into the top eight and sometimes even the top four, so which club is going to do it in 2014?I'm a life member of the North Melbourne Football Club, playing in a premier...

It was a bad year for James Hird and the Essendon Football Club.Bomber Thompson got fined $30,000, Danny Corcoran was suspended and James Hird is not allowed to coach for almost a whole season.But Hird is going to have a great Christmas because he's...

Who wants to coach St Kilda? Apparently not Alan Richardson or Robert Harvey, who have both run a mile at the prospect.Instead it looks like the job will go to powerful head of football Chris Pelchen's best friend Mark Williams, leaving his current ...

What is happening at St Kilda?Last week, after two years in the hot seat, coach Scott Watters was bundled out. He was told not to go on Melbourne radio, which he did; a few hours later he was out the door.Having coached there in 1997, I know the cul...

On October 8 I went to America for a holiday and the trade period had already started.At that time Jesse White wanted to go to Collingwood, Billy Longer was supposed to be going to Hawthorn and Ben McEvoy was entrenched at St Kilda.I returned late l...

A couple of years ago one of the great games of footy was played at the MCG, the draw between Collingwood and St Kilda in the 2010 AFL Grand Final.They were the two best sides in the competition at the time and promised to be powerhouses for years t...

When I played footy too many years ago for many people to remember I was called 'Crackers' Keenan because people said I was mad.But I certainly am not mad enough not to realise that this Buddy Franklin to Sydney deal is a rort.According to the contr...

If you believed the coaches and pundits losing their minds at the moment, Sydney has performed some sort of highway robbery.It seems like the whole footy world has gone a little mad at the moment, crying foul over Sydney's bid for Lance Franklin and...